"You might want to come out again ... afterwards?"
"Yes—I should hope to. Besides ... there are my cousins...."
"Indian ones——?"
"Yes. Very clever. Very charming. Rose ... you've been six years in India. Have you ever met, in a friendly way, a cultivated, well-born Indian—man or woman?"
"N-no. Not worth mentioning."
"And ... you haven't wanted to?"
He felt her shrink from the direct question.
"Why press the point, Roy? It needn't make any real difference—need it—between you and me?"
Her counter-question was still more direct, more searching.
"Perhaps not—now," he said. "It might ... make a lot ... afterwards——"